Think Pinker

According to Reuters there’s a little excitement in the air, since researchers who have been doing experiments on a breast cancer vaccine are seeing some very promising results. In fact, recent fine tuning to the vaccine has resulted and even higher hopes for its success.

How does this vaccine work? It provides a cancer fighting gene right into the sell, which then create what are called immune system proteins, and also tumor destroying cells.

,” Wei-Zen Wei of Wayne State University in Detroit, who led the study, said in an interview. “It is made right in your body.”

So far the results have been only in mice but what they have seen is that HER2 positive breast cancer which is responsible for 20% to 30$ of breast cancers, saw the tumors eliminated once the vaccine was given. Now that’s the type of results you like to see from a study.

Even the HER2 tumors that have become resistant to drugs used for treatment are being eliminated with the vaccine.

That’s because the vaccine is designed to work at the cellular level. The HER2/neu protein is overactive in breast cancer and also in other cancers such as ovarian and colorectal cancer.

There is an antibody based drug called herceptin or trastuzumab that aggressively attacks these tumors, but the problem is that patients usually acquire immunity to these drugs and after that there’s little left in the form of aggressive treatments that might work.

How soon we’ll see clinical studies for the breast cancer vaccine is yet to be determined but have several decades of looking for a cure, it’s hopeful that we just might be a lot closer to a cure with just a simple vaccination. At least with HER2 breast cancer.